Broadly I study historic, current, and speculative energy regimes within the Ohio River Valley and the greater Midwest Rust Belt and how contested knowledges of toxicity and harm either enable or disable development. I tend to work within the intersections of political geography/ecology, energy humanities, critical disability studies, and science and technology studies. My dissertation subject focuses on historic (Standard Oil) and present (Marathon Petroleum Corp) marketing, policy, lobbying and infrastructure (both extraction and waste) development in Ohio as something moderated and reproduced by Progressive Era eugenic logic that is now being reconstituted again to codify the industry’s right to extract, to maim.  

I am also Co-Chair for the Board of Directors at Buckeye Environmental Network, a 33-year-old environmental justice organization rooted in “site fights,” a defensive strategy for fenceline communities against proposed/existing sites of development with point-source pollution impacts.